


Lucid Insights

by sixbeforelunch



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-12
Updated: 2007-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Have you ever known something without really knowing it? Romance. Season 7. Spoilers for Meridian and Fallen/Homecoming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucid Insights

It was raining. Not hard, just a light drizzle that made the air almost unbearably humid and her hair frizz and her bra stick uncomfortably to her skin. The road was narrow and made of cobblestones. Small tufts of vegetation stuck out here and there between the stones. Some of the stones were cracked, and there were places where some were missing. Sam could see grooves that had been worn in the road by years of use. They might have been made by carts, she thought. She looked at Daniel, who probably could have told her all sorts of things about the road and who made it and what it said about the people who had lived here, but somehow it felt wrong to ask the question and disrupt the quiet companionship they'd had since starting out over an hour ago. He was walking next to her and examining the scenery with a sort of interest that she just couldn't conjure up that morning.

The road stretched along the gently rolling land across a landscape that was mostly treeless, but covered in grass and small shrubs. The sky was a dull grey. Off in the distance, she could see darker rain clouds threatening. Looking behind her, she could still see the tiny speck of the Stargate at the top of one of the hills. She pictured the Colonel and Teal'c examining the abandoned village they'd found on the other side of that hill. Sometimes she wondered what they talked about, when no one else was around.

In front of them, the palace loomed and the closer they got the more certain she was that it had been made by a Goa'uld. It was huge, made up of sharp angles and dark colors. It reminded her of the Goa'uld palace near the ocean, where they'd all become addicted to the light. She frowned when she realized she couldn't remember the planetary designation. She was usually pretty good at remembering important designations.

P3X-513 was where she gave up on Jonas Hansen for the second time. The Colonel was marooned on P5C-768. Daniel lost Sha're for good on P8X-872.

About a thousand feet from the palace, the road widened and the stones changed from simple rocks to large plates of textured stone. She could see places where the stones had been removed and not replaced. She took it as a good sign that it really was abandoned here.

The doors were made of dark metal and covered in Goa'uld writing that had been defaced in places. Her grip on her P-90 tightened automatically. She turned to Daniel. "What's it say?"

"Typical Goa'uld propaganda," he said, "'I am your god. All who do not honor me shall face torment in this life and the next.' Yada."

"Oh. Gets old, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does," Daniel said with a small smile. "Frankly, I was much more interested in the village than this place." He gestured at the gaudy doors. One of them was ajar, and there was a six inch gap that neither one of them could have squeezed through. Daniel started pushing on the door to widen the gap. "But you've never passed up a change to look at Goa'uld technology before. Though I don't know if we'll find any here."

Sam was suddenly aware of her aching feet and frizzy hair and the rain that was starting to get heavier. "I'm just having a bad day. My clothes feel like someone glued them on, and I think I'm going to get my period before the end of the day." Daniel coughed and examined the writing on the door. "Too much information?"

"A little." Daniel threw his weight at the door, and it swung open almost half way. "After you."

"Always the gentleman," Sam said.

"Not really. You have the bigger gun."

She stepped through the opening and did a sweep of the room, checking for signs of life. All she saw was what looked like a small rodent and a few birds that had nested near the ceiling. The room was lit by a skylight and some large windows, but the lack of sunlight outside gave the room an eerie grey glow.

"Very gothic," she said. Or tried to say, because she was cut off by a loud clap of thunder. She peeked out between the two doors. Outside, it was pouring. Sam sighed. Wonderful.

Her radio crackled to life. "Carter. Carter, come in."

"We're here, Sir.

"It's raining pretty hard here. There's a creek down here and it's started to flood. We're ankle-deep in water. Teal'c and I are making a run for higher ground. What's your situation?"

"The rain just started here, sir. We're fine for now and this looks like the highest land for miles. I don't think we're in any danger."

"Copy that. Tell Daniel the next time he wants the village, he can have it."

Sam caught Daniel rolling his eyes and grinned. "Yes sir."

"I'll radio back once we get to dry ground."

Daniel grabbed his radio. "Stay dry, Jack."

The Colonel's reply was cut off by another loud rumble of thunder, and Sam thought that was probably for the best.

Daniel was writing. His pack sat a few feet from him, one of his notebooks was out on his lap, and he was carefully transcribing the text on the wall. She was sitting close enough to hear the soft scratch of ball-point pen against paper. It mixed with the sound of rain hitting the windows.

"How long have we been here?" he asked. His voice cut through the stillness in the room.  
She looked at her watch. "Almost an hour." It was still raining. Hard. Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c had abandoned the village and gone back to the SGC after the flood waters rose to the buildings at the highest elevations.

It occurred to her now that she and Daniel were possibly the only two people on the planet.

Daniel hadn't started writing again. He was staring at the notebook in his hands, completely still. He didn't look up when he asked, "Why are you having a bad day?"

"Frizzy hair. PMS."

"And?"

"And...Do remember when you were a teenager and you used to get horribly depressed because it was Thursday? And you had a pimple?"

He smiled. "Unfortunately."

"It's a little like that, but without the excessive angst or self-absorption, fortunately." She laughed and leaned back, resting her head against the wall. "I used to write really, really bad poetry back then."

"I used to sit in my room and listen to music. I wanted to be a rock star when I was thirteen."

She laughed.

Daniel frowned, looking slightly hurt. "What?"

"I can't imagine you wanting to be anything but what you are."

Daniel looked mildly surprised but said nothing.

"What else don't I know about you, Dr. Jackson."

Daniel looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "I could tell you, but where's the fun in that?"

The room was dusty, and stripped bare. She'd felt a spark of hope when Daniel found a reference to a lab in some of the writings, but it looked like anything of value had been stripped bare a long time ago.

"What do you think happened here?" she asked.

"There's no evidence of an uprising or a battle. It looks like whoever was here just gave up the planet for one reason or another and pulled out. Apparently they took all the important things with them."

She squatted down to examine the underneath of what looked like a work table. "Any idea who it was?"

"Not really. The name is scratched out in all the writing I've found. It looks like someone came along after the Goa'uld left and tried to erase the legacy of it. That would also explain the condition of this place. A lot of things have been stolen or damaged."

"So there could still be people on this planet."

"It's a possibility. We're rarely one hundred percent sure an planet is deserted."

Sam nodded and tilted her head to get a better look. It was dusty under the table, and she spotted something that looked like the droppings of a small animal. She got back up.

Daniel was sitting on one of the tables, writing again. She knew better than to try to sneak a peak at one of his journals. He was territorial about them, though he claimed they were there for people to see and it didn't seem to bother him that Jonas had read and memorized almost everything he'd written. Sometimes, she had to admit, Daniel was just plain weird.

But weren't they all?

After a moment, she joined him on the table. "How are you doing?"

He glanced at her. "Well, I'm a little bored and the humidity is getting to me, but other than that I can't complain."

"I meant--"

"I know what you meant." He sighed. "People seem to ask me that a lot these days."

"It's a legitimate question. You did die."

He smiled a little. "We've all died. You can't be on SG1 if you haven't died at least once."

"Jonas never died. I think he felt left out." She missed Jonas. It was tiring, this constant flux of people into and out of her life.

"I never got to know Jonas."

"He's a good man."

Daniel nodded. "I've read his work. I think he was better at this than me."

She looked up, surprised. "Daniel, Jonas is a friend and I respect him, but no one is better at this than you."

"He seems more passionate."

"I can't imagine anyone more passionate than you, Daniel."

He shook his head and returned his attention to his journal, basically ending the conversation. Except Sam wasn't sure she was ready for it to end.

"Daniel, maybe this is none of my business, but...did you want to leave?"

Daniel looked up and un-clicked his ball-point pen. Well, now she had his attention. "What?"

"I know that you didn't have a lot of choices, but if the situation had been different, if you hadn't been...hurt, would you have still gone with Oma?"

"Not knowing then what I know now?"

"Yeah."

He was quiet for a long time. "I don't know."

"Oh."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Daniel frowned at her. She closed her eyes. There were no windows in the lab, but she could head the soft echo of rain in the silence of the palace. When had Daniel stopped being the easiest thing in her life? "After you left I was afraid maybe it was something we'd done." He was shaking his head, but he didn't interrupt her and she was grateful for that. "I told myself over and over that it had nothing to do with us. I told myself that you'd done it to save your life. But Daniel, my dad was there, and he could have helped you."

"If he'd been able to save my life, I'd have never been the same again. And you know that."

"Yes, I do. But I want--I want to know that you won't leave us again."

"I can't promise you that."

"Daniel, are you unhappy?" Maybe it was time to stop beating around the bush and just ask the question she'd been wanting to ask for a long time.

He sighed. "I'm here, in a building that hasn't been seen by human eyes for hundreds of years. I should be thrilled. But I know that no one's going to care. Four or five people will read my report, and it'll be filed away. The military will consider this mission a failure because it didn't yield anything of strategic value. There's never going to be an excavation back at that village, no one is ever going to know anything about the people that lived and died there. Do you know what that sort of thing is like for someone who grew up believing that teaching and learning form the highest form of human experience?

"But the Stargate program is the greatest tool for the advancement of the human race since someone thought to start using symbols to represent words. And I'm willing to make certain sacrifices to be a part of it." He smiled. "Don't worry about me, Sam, I'm not planning on running off with non-corporeal beings or tossing myself off a cliff any time soon. I'm good. I have...I have what I want. Mostly." He paused. "What about you?"

"What?"

"Well, we've investigated my psyche. What about you? Are you happy?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "Well that was succinct."

"I can't imagine wanting to do anything other than what I'm doing."

Daniel sat down next to her again. "Good to know." He reached out and touched her face. She thought for one odd moment that he might kiss her. Instead, he brushed her cheek. "Dust," he said by way of explanation.

"P4X-347," she said.

Daniel blinked. "What"  
"P4X-347. That's where we were all addicted to the light." Daniel had almost died then too.

"Oh," was all he said.

By the time the rain eased up, they were both sick of the palace. They ended up in the garden, sitting under the trees. Daniel laid out on the grass, with one arm tucked under his head and the other stretched out so he could play with the small blue flowers that crept along the ground. Sam rested against the tree trunk and stared out at the garden. It was beautiful, but knowing that it had been created by a Goa'uld stole some of its beauty, as if the evil that had resided here had permeated even the plants and animals.

Time stretched. Daniel looked up at her. "Bored?"

She smiled. "A little."

He handed her a worn leather book and said, "Let me know if you want to sleep. I'll keep watch." She realized it was one of his journals. She looked at him, surprised by the offer, but Daniel was looking away. She flipped to the current date and skimmed a bit. There was nothing personal in it, it was mostly notes about the various planets they visited.

There were some carefully drawn diagrams and notes written in what looked like Goa'uld writing. Underneath he'd written 'ref--Teal'c or Tok'ra' which probably meant that it was a dialect he didn't understand.

It was dry reading, and eventually she tired of it. Daniel was still stretched out along the ground. He had his eyes closed and she wasn't sure if he was awake or asleep. He'd turned slightly toward her, onto his side. One hand was tucked under his head. His other hand curled up near his chest. His mouth was open, just a little. He looked good.

She shifted her attention away from him. The rain was lighter, and in the distance she could see blue in the sky. They'd leave this place soon and she felt a pang of regret that she shouldn't have felt about a run down Goa'uld palace.

She looked back at Daniel and remembered his calloused fingers brushing the dust off of her face. She remembered the walk from the Stargate and brushing her thigh up against his when they got too close. Then she remembered late nights in the lab and Chinese food and Mad Max movies at three in the morning when they were both too tired to work and too wired on caffeine and discovery to go to bed. She remembered falling asleep on his couch and waking up with a blanket tucked around her and fresh coffee within arm's reach.

Oh.

The realization startled her at first, then it settled over her. She thought about it for a while, and the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. It was like solving a logic problem. She hadn't seen it, but now that she did, it was so clear she couldn't understand how it had eluded her at all.

She reached out and touched Daniel's face. Ran her fingers along his jaw to feel the scratchy growth of beard. He opened his eyes, and blinked a little, focusing on her.

"Daniel," she said, and smiled.

He blinked again, frowned a little, and sat up. Then he winced and looked at the hand he'd been resting his head on. Massaging it, he looked at her. Suddenly, staring at him, everything that had seemed so simple seconds ago was very, very complicated. She looked away.

Then his hand was on her face, turning her back to him. "Are you okay?"

She shook her head. "Have you ever known something without really knowing it?"

Daniel pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. She could almost see him trying to follow her. A groggy, post-catnap Daniel didn't fire on all cylinders. "What?"

"I missed you when you were gone. There were times when I needed you, and you weren't there."

He looked sad and guilty, in that annoying way that he took everything on himself whether it was his responsibility or not. "I'm sorry."

"No, I don't mean that. I guess I didn't realize before that how much I'd relied on having you around. How much I like having you around." He was watching her with an odd, unreadable expression on his face and she was struck with the uncomfortable feeling that he was reading her, laying her secrets bare on the grass. She looked back at the palace. The rain had all but stopped and the air smelled crisp and fresh. It was cool against her skin.

When she looked back, Daniel had an odd little smile on his face.

She said, "I just..."

He reached over and wrapped his fingers around hers. Kissed the back of her hand, kissed her palm. "Sam. I know."

She smiled. And then she laughed and Daniel was right there laughing with her. "You knew," she accused. "How long have you known?"

He sobered. "Since I came back. Since I saw you again for what seemed like the first time."

"Oh. Wow. That's a long time. You never said anything."

He didn't answer her. Instead, he leaned across and they were so close she could smell the scent of wet grass in his hair. His hand on her cheek smelled like those blue flowers that covered the garden. He touched her hair, her neck. Then he kissed her. His lips were soft and warm against hers. She didn't want it to end, and when Daniel started to pull away, she grabbed onto his jacket and didn't let go until he started laughing.

She blushed. "I..."

"Yeah, me too," Daniel said. It was nice, she thought, that he could read her mind sometimes because this was all very strange and going to her head and she wasn't sure she could express herself very well at the moment.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" she asked after a moment's silence.

"I didn't want to push. I think I knew you felt the same way. Or that you could. It was just a matter of waiting."

"For me to catch up?" He shrugged. "I can't believe I never thought...I feel stupid."

"Must be a first," Daniel said. She threw a flower at him. He caught it and tucked it behind one ear. The sight made her want to kiss him again, so she did.

Daniel was a good kisser, she decided. A very good kisser. She rested her head on his shoulder.

"What if I had never caught up?"

"Then I don't know," he said. "I would have said something eventually. I was scared."

"Of me?"

"Of this. Silly as that seems now."

"This is good," she said, then frowned. "This is almost too good. Shouldn't this be more awkward?"

"I think we deserve easy for once in our lives," Daniel said. "Don't you?"

"Yeah, I do." Easy. It was easy with Daniel. Daniel who was stubborn and moody and too smart and too empathetic for his own good. Daniel who rarely shrank from a fight or gave up on a cause he supported no matter the cost to him or the people who cared about him. Somehow, it was easy to be his friend. It was easy to love him.

Her radio made a static noise. "Carter?"

She closed her eyes. It was over. They were going home and there was no reason to come back here. Half an hour ago, this garden had been tinged by the evil of the Goa'uld. Now, she didn't want to leave. She got a sudden knot in her stomach. Maybe all this was tied into the beauty and mystery of this place. Maybe it wouldn't be easy anymore once they left. It was simple here, but in the real world there were complications. It could get very hard very fast.

"Carter? Daniel? You there?"

It was Daniel who answered. "We're here, Jack."

"Rain finally stopped near the 'gate. What's your situation?"

"It's gone here too."

"Alright, head back now. We'll wait for you by the 'gate. Oh, and Daniel, I think I got the better end of the deal after all." Colonel O'Neill's smirk was almost audible. "I won fifty bucks on a baseball game back on the base."

"I don't know, Jack. I had a pretty good day. I learned a lot."

She pictured the Colonel rolling his eyes at that. "Whatever. Meet you in an hour. Out."

Daniel ran his fingers through her hair. "Ready?"

"Yeah." She smiled. Easy was good, but hard was okay too. Either way, it was Daniel.

end


End file.
